The last pre-Pacific War destroyer class of the Californian Navy, the ships of the Antianeirai class were designed as counters to the Japanese "super-destroyers" of the Fubuki design lineage, now that the Californians were freed of the naval arms limitation treaties. The name ship of the class, as shown here in late 1943, served until 1965 (albeit in modified form; refit to follow) when the first ship of the Princess Kayia class entered the fleet.

Armament:
8 x 120mm/50 DP (This gun suffered from low training and elevation speeds and was limited in effectiveness to barrage fire until refitted with more powerful hydraulic motors on all surviving ships of the class from late 1944 onwards).
4 x 50mm AA (Originally a hand-loaded design that entered service in the mid 1930's, a frantic re-design effort led to a fully automatic design ready for fleet service by mid-1943. At this time the class was also fitted with twin mounts in place of their original singles)
12 x 25mm AA (Finished the war with 16, an additional mount replacing four DC throwers forward of X turret.)
10 x 550mm TT.

(Their closest analogue to them would be the Capitani Romani or Mogador classes, with a protective turtle deck and speed in the range of a "normal" destroyer.)

Last edited by Voyager989 on August 21st, 2010, 7:32 am, edited 1 time in total.

Four ships of this class were completed (Medusa, Sphinx, Siren, Lamia) out of a planned total of sixteen. Somewhat overloaded with the various systems they carried, and unfortunately equipped with Sea Slug Mark I, these ships were white elephants in the Californian Navy as soon as their replacements began to appear. They were given a new lease on life when a surface-to-surface missile capable of being fired from their Sea Slug launchers appeared, and soldiered on for quite some time, due to being the only surface ships in the Navy aside from the old converted battleships capable of engaging a heavy surface group.

due to being the only surface ships in the Navy aside from the old converted battleships capable of engaging a heavy surface group.

Big guns and missiles =/= ability to engage a heavy surface group. Sure, it helps, but with the exception of the Iowas all U.S. ships from about 1975 onwards were armed with, at best, medium caliber guns and rather dinky missiles (compared to their Soviet counterparts). Yet even without carrier support a surface action group of Ticos and Burkes, for example, can engage and at least hamper a heavy surface group, especially one composed of older ships - it can lob Harpoons and damage if not outright sink escorting vessels, wound larger ships and, most importantly, deny the enemy force offensive capability by shooting down their missiles.

...and I'm sure erik_t is going to come in here and prove me wrong, but I know he'll agree with this sentiment: it's kinda tiring to see people think that they need big guns and missiles to have a useful warship. There is almost nothing as a useless warships (the white elephant status notwithstanding). This really isn't meant to be directed at you, just uhhh...you were kinda the victim of a random rant here :p

Other than that...you are indeed only going to be fielding DASH on a pad that dinky. And not when SeaSlug/whatever ASuW missile is active.

Your backstory does highlight the transitional period when missile technology was maturing, so that's another extra consideration.

Now to make this post useful, I did wonder, back to your destroyer - it's got WWII era torpedo launchers in 1963. Would those even be of much utility by then? Most ships still around that would've had them had them removed by then.